


Celestial

by madforscamander



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, angsty as heck, everyone is a mess, minimal slow burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 07:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15836790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madforscamander/pseuds/madforscamander
Summary: Heartbroken after seeing your long-time crush and first love, Remus Lupin, ask someone else to the Yule Ball and being forced to watch them dance together, you flee the scene, causing you to accidentally overhear a conversation that alters your romantic life forever.





	Celestial

**Author's Note:**

> POV switches at every // mark and begins with the reader.

A soft hum of instrumental music spread its way throughout the slowly filling dorm room as you sat, cross-legged, head tilted, considering the piece of fabric that hung in front of you. It rippled as the door, somewhere to your left, opened and closed, creating a synthetic breeze that moved the silk like water. With furrowed brows you studied the movement of it, trying to let it distract you from the constriction happening around your heart, a relentless squeezing sensation of distress. 

The combination of a quiet thump which sounded besides you and the glimpse of motion from the corner of your peripherals, including a long stream of red, made you aware that Lily had sat next to without needing her voice to sound. It did, though, with a coaxing quietness, as she promised, “Remus can’t stop you from looking absolutely gorgeous tonight.”

Taking a risk you let your head fall further to the side, luckily finding her chest to pillow your cheek. You breathed deeply, trying to steady it by matching your inhales and exhales to Lily’s even heartbeat. “I still know I’m going to hate it,” you said into her t-shirt, feeling the material brush against your makeuped skin. “Not only is the guy I’m in love with going to the Yule Ball with someone else, but I’m going alone.” 

“I’m only going with Potter because he practically forced me into it. I’ll keep you company. Plus, Sirius is going with Marlene as friends, so they can hang out with us, too.” 

You blinked your eyes up at Lily, who was smiling with an overwhelming amount of warmth and promise. “Please,” you scoffed, pawing at her arm with your hand, “You’re going with James because you’re absolutely mad about him.” 

Lily denied it, naturally, but the fact her words were stumbled over and mostly incoherent and her cheeks flared red contradicted the refusal. The teasing that followed from your mouth was even more natural, perhaps, causing Lily to shove you off of her playfully. She argued against your suggestive glances and comments, saying “stop it!” and “let it go, Y/N,” but laughing too throatily for you to take it seriously. So you laughed, too, letting it fill up your lungs and revive them, relieve them slightly of the scorching pain from thinking of Remus’ hand pressed against the small of someone else’s back. 

It died too soon, allowed the pain back in too easily. Your body surrendered to sadness as if that was all it knew, and Lily frowned, seeing your smile fade without a trace of it left behind. “Remus is a git,” she said, scrunching her face, causing you to huff out a breath. 

“You couldn’t look more like you are lying,” you responded dryly. 

“I mean, he could be worse,” she suggested, “but he could also realize that you are literally the best person in the world.” You nodded with minimal effort, displaying your reluctance to agree so Lily’s tone acquired a defensive twinge as she continued, “All I’m saying is that, maybe, you should spend your energy finding someone who loves you back as opposed to wallowing over Remus.” 

You scoffed and turned your attention back to the dress, which had gone stiff from stillness. “Yeah, as if I’m ever going to find someone who actually likes me.” 

//

James was screaming or humming or talking loudly from somewhere inside their crowded dormitory, causing screeching sound waves to bounce back and forth inside of Sirius’ head, making the aching feeling of his forehead intensify. He grimaced, face tensing in equal parts pain and annoyance, before yelling, “Prongs, will you shut the hell up already?” 

This caused a halt in the room; Remus’ hands halted in tying his black bowtie, Peter’s still united shoelaces stumbled out of his fingertips and James’ voice cut off immediately, mouth still wide open, conversation with Kingsley interrupted by Sirius’ momentary outburst. 

In truth, it wasn’t as momentary as it was ominous; Sirius’ lips had been kept in a thin line, brow line tensed, jaw locked, for quite a few days by the time the Yule Ball finally rolled around. The first, and only, time he had smiled since watching Remus embrace an excited and squealing Dorcas under an invitation written with floating candles was when Marlene suggested they go together. A surge of relief coursed through him, strong enough to allow him to grin widely at Marlene’s offer. “It’s just as friends,” she clarified while frowning, as if she expected those words to make him do the same, but Sirius revealed in the invitation, now having an excuse to not have asked the girl he wanted to go with. 

The girl who was, through both obvious signs and truthful admission, in love with his best friend. 

James looked at him apologetically, rubbing his collared neck with his hand. “Gee, I’m sorry, mate. I didn’t mean to annoy you. I was just trying to get Kingsley’s opinion on ties.” He turned squarely towards Sirius’ reclined body, exposing an array of bow ties hanging from his outstretched arm. 

Unwilling to apologize, Sirius grumbled, “I like the red one,” before tucking his face into his pillow and breathing loudly and visibly into the cotton case.   
He heard the decisive clicks of dress shoes against hardwood against the faint return of conversations, causing him to look up as suddenly as he had forced his head into the pillow. Remus stood above him, lips pursed in something that looked like defiance. Sirius returned with an expectant look, a plead to say something, or leave (or perhaps just the latter). 

But Remus did the former after clearing his throat. “You know, it’s not fair of you to be a git to James just because you didn’t have the courage to ask the person you really wanted to invite to the ball to the ball.” 

Sirius rolled his eyes but was left stuttering, wanted to be annoyed but knew Remus was right on some simplistic level, the same one that disregarded the fact that Y/N had been imaging kissing Remus since the day they met and told Sirius she was in love with Remus late one night in fourth year and came to Sirius in tears after Remus asked Dorcas to the ball, only ceasing to shake after being held in Sirius’ arms for around thirty minutes. But Remus did not know these truths—Sirius had sworn to secrecy on his life— so could not comprehend the enormous burden Sirius would be putting on Y/N’s shoulders if he asked her to the ball. Asked her with wide eyes and a hopeful smile and the hope to spin her into their first kiss, mouths uncertain but ready. As, not only would Y/N be crumbling under the pain of seeing Remus with another woman, but would feel incredibly guilty for not reciprocating.

At least that’s how Sirius saw it, which had transformed him into the human equivalent of anger.   
But anything was better than telling so he kept his mouth shut, lips thinned out into a straight line. Until now, as they hung wide open, unable to rebuttal Remus’ statement but knowing he wasn’t entirely wrong. 

“I, uh,” Sirius began, hating the smirk his uncertainty plastered onto Remus’ face. “It’s complicated, alright? Not everything in her life revolves around me.” 

Remus rose his eyebrows. “It sure seems like it,” he responded and Sirius hated how his heart fluttered at the suggestion, provocation of reciprocation. But Remus distracted it soon after: “That’s beyond the point. You and I both know how James gets before interacting with Lily. So go easy on him, Pads. Some of us get nervous around birds.” 

Sirius gave an annoyed humph towards Remus, turning around in his bed, hating how he just was settling into the mattress when Kingsley’s voice announced, “Okay, lads, if we want to be at the Great Hall on time we better go now.” So he kicked off the sheets with his dress shoe clad feet, following an unbalanced and bouncy James down to the Great Hall, keeping a steadying hand on his shoulder as they passed an array of gowns and dress robes across the Hogwarts grounds. 

“And we still beat them,” Kingsley sighed once they arrived at the doors of the Great Hall, followed by light laughter as his hand that wasn’t squeezing the bridge of his nose was seized by Ernie, who kissed it softly.

And the laughter rippled throughout the entire group as he said, “Well at least your date isn’t late,” wiggling his eyebrows at Kingsley who just shook his head.

The laughter didn’t die down; it was cut short, stolen or detached somehow by the cascading of beautiful women down the staircase. Sirius made a point to glance to James, who was smiling so widely only his forehead and chin seemed to exist beyond the grin, as Lily descended wearing a gown almost as red as her hair. He turned back just in time to send a wink to Marlene, who was in something black and suffocatingly tight, and looked stunning, of course. Sirius focused on the contours of her face, the glimmer of her earrings and the carefulness of her high-heeled steps, gulping down his throat, distracting, distracting, distracting. But I’m a moment of desperation he finally let his eyes flicker about, land on the girl who looked as though she wasn’t approaching a ball but going through a death march, smiling faintly but gorgeously, still. Wearing something that made Sirius’ breath hitch and his heart quake in his chest, right underneath his white bow-tie.

“Well you look absolutely handsome,” Marlene said, grabbing Sirius’ hand and attention all at once. She squeezed his palm, sending comfort through his body, making him smile.

“Says you,” he teased, squeezing back. “You are a vision.” Sirius said it as though it was a promise instead of a compliment, an agreement of his appeal, for his eyes quickly found their way to you again and some part of him realized he needed Marlene to know he thought highly of her in spite of being in love with someone else.

But she kept her grip steady and unrelenting, almost mirroring the consistency of Y/N’s frown and the way it made Sirius’ heart exist in the base of his stomach.

//

No amount of punch could quench the dryness in your throat. No amount of small talk could erase the image of Remus’ body flush against Dorcas’ in a slow dance. No amount of Sirius’ support could make you believe you’d actually make it through this night without at least a few tears streaking through your makeup.

He didn’t leave your side, the angel. But neither did Marlene, who’s hand didn’t leave his, and although she knew who your frown was directed at, you still had to choose your words more carefully and say less of them than you would have if it were just Sirius.

Sirius. Sirius who didn’t leave your side, the angel, even when Marlene got up and began dancing, coming back after each song to try and drag him out by his ringed fingers. “She needs me,” he would say, or a variant of it, and Marlene would always leave. At first it was with the smile, but as the night progressed and your punch cups piled up on the table and you ran out of words to say though anguish still ruptured through your skin, Marlene began frowning and arguing and stomping her feet. 

“Go,” you finally said, breathless and embarrassed, gesturing towards Marlene’s growing glare. “I’ll be okay.” 

Your smile was as thin as it was fake, and though the obviousness of your discomfort was not covered he ascended to the dance floor, while Marlene mouthed thanks at you while following him backwards. Unable to watch for more than a millisecond, see everyone but you paired up and laughing, you left quietly to the restroom. It was unsurprising but relieving to find every stall empty, as you chose the closest one to the door before sitting atop the closed toilet seat and dryly sobbing into your hands. 

The sinking feeling of helplessness resonated through your bones so deeply you didn’t even care about looking as pathetic as you knew you did, hunched over on porcelain in an immaculate gown. Because you saw something new in Remus’ eyes as they looked down at Dorcas, a warm gleam on the cusp of love. Because you could practically feel the laughter that shook through his ribcage in your own, hating but being merciless to the fluttering sensations. Because he smiled at her the same way you smiled at him, warm and full, giving and adoringly. Because you were still enamored with him, in the same way you were since meeting him, and this was the first time he had shown interest not only in someone, but someone else. 

After ten lonely minutes you emerged, eyes dry and throat scorched from screaming into your hands. Only a few uneven patches had been made in your makeup, not nearly enough to give you away. But what almost did was the sound of your heels against the cobblestone flooring of the hallway as voices approached, both of which you knew well after spending the evening talking to.

In a dangerously fast motion you ducked into a hallway, flattening your back against it, feeling mortar and brick rough against your fingertips. Shoes echoed across the almost-empty corridor, alongside a deep voice, pleading in a rather demanding tone, “Just let me go find her.”

A scoff was sounded, one you had heard multiple times already. So familiar with it you could see the pushing out of Marlene’s reddened lips. “I’m your date, you know. You can’t just keep abandoning me for Y/N, regardless of how badly Remus broke her heart. I have feelings, too. Standards.”

“Yes, but you’re not the self-destructive, heartbroken girl in this situation,” Sirius argued. You worked on evening your breath as his rang ragged throughout the halls.

Suddenly, the unpleasantly high clink of Marlene’s heels stopped, leaving her standing God knows where in relation to Sirius. The brokenness in her voice gave away there must have been some distance; too much for Marlene, if her words were anything to come by.

“But I am,” she said quietly. But it still bounced across the corridor, unforgiving cobblestone and hug-ceilings making the small admission unfairly exposed. “I only said just friends because it’s painfully obvious, Sirius, how much you love Y/N. I was hoping that tonight, with the romantic lights and music and the dress”—you heard the ruffle of satin and could envision Marlene swaying her skirt about with graceful charm—“that it would be enough to win you over. But obviously…”

The sound of shoes returned, but they were burlier, more even slaps against stone flooring. “Marlene,” Sirius called out softly, and some part of your chest twinged at the intrinsic knowledge he had grabbed her fleeting hand, trapping her from turning away. “Marls, remember what I told you at the beginning of the night? That you are a vision? That’s still true. I’m sorry I’m in love with her, more sorry than you’ll ever know, but that doesn’t mean for a minute you are any less amazing, less deserving.” 

In a moment of nothing except honesty you could hear Marlene sniffle slightly, your heart aching at the fact that her tears were a product of your existence in the same way yours were a product of Dorcas’. Turning your head to the side, you were about to close your eyes in silent defeat of becoming the evil you feared when a spider dropped right in front of your face. Smartly, you splayed a hand over your open mouth, silencing the scream. But in reaction you had taken a few jumps back, and when you went to lean back against the calloused brick you realized there was no brick to press up to.

Rather, there was only Sirius and Marlene and you, directly in their line of sight. 

//

While Sirius could not get to her fast enough, reclaiming his hand from Marlene’s and stomping indentations of dress shoe soles into the floor, Marlene stayed put behind him, withering unfairly. This entire situation was unfair, Sirius decided, some star crossed tragedy even that Muggle playwright Shakespeare couldn’t brainstorm though he loved to ruin people’s lives in the same way Y/N had just destroyed his, leaving it a broken pile of rubbish.

She kept walking back, looking like she wasn’t meaning to, beautiful face seeping with guilt. “Sirius, Marlene, I can-”

“Explain?” Sirius interrupted, reaching her faster than she could run. Maybe she wasn’t trying to. Maybe she should have been; Sirius wasn’t exactly sure why his feet pushed him here, so close to her he might burn from the sensation. Drawn to her always. Even now, when rage ripped through his chest, hot and flaring. 

“I was using the restroom,” she said, breathing course, tone desperate. 

“Right,” Sirius seethed. “You know the closest one is about two hallways down?”

There was a pathetic look of apologeticness strewn across her near-crying face as she said, between a whisper and a wail, “I know. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to pry I just…” Sirius was looking at her, eyes unblinking and expectant and impatient. But she kept choking on her words and something in Sirius stupidly softened at her struggle. “Why didn’t you tell me, Siri?”

His heart snapped as though it wasn’t a muscle, but a young autumn twig, ripe from a tree and thin. Her words cut right through the middle of him, the plead in it, the curiosity. As if this was a time to get hopeful.

So he put every available ounce of resentment into his snarky reply. “The same reason you didn’t tell Remus.”

Her face twitched, an odd mixture of pride and self-loathing flowing through every inch of Sirius’ body at the reaction. Suddenly, a new voice spoke up, one equally as broken, but in a more gravelly and breathless way.

“I’ll let you two talk,” Marlene said, turning her back before Sirius could yell to her at her face. So he settled on screaming to her back, asking her to say with desperation dripping from his words, only to be responded to with the drag of her skirt and the whimpers of her mouth.

Rapidly he turned to face Y/N once more, the anger almost as relentless in his body as his delivery was to her quivering, tear-stricken face. “You broke her heart,” he growled, watching as she sobbed in earnest, her chest convulsing.

“And yours…” she howled. After the admission her body quaked, all her limbs jolting at once, as if that was the worst of it. In ruthless desperation, Sirius’ body copied the action, wishing it was the truth. That hurting him hurt her, hurt her worse, hurt the most.

Wishing she wouldn’t have had to do it to have known it to be true.

Because Sirius was angry but still in love, recognizing it by the urge to cradle her wet face, dry it with the pads of his thumbs, kiss all the shadows of teardrops until nothing remained on her skin except the physical embodiment of adoration, sweet and soft, tender and tireless. These feelings lasted through natural disasters, the kind of tests designed to break hearts into moving on. And Sirius blew out a breath because he knew come tomorrow morning and the next one and the next that they’d still remain, deeply lodged inside his chest, completely inescapable and unfixable.

“I want to say something,” she announced, as if they were surrounded by loud chatter as opposed to the distant chirping of crickets and swoops of nighttime wind. “I need to but… I can’t stop crying.” She was cut off by her own laughter, self-destructive but necessary to rebuild, as her sniffling quieted down after it, tears being swallowed one by one.

“Well aren’t I a mess,” she commented, and Sirius’ mouth opened to disagree, to say that there was no amount of crying that she could do while being caked in mascara and eyeliner that could ever make her look ugly. But he kept quiet, so she continued. “Part of the reason I was so scared about Remus liking someone else was because I loved him so young I never got to experience crushes in the way most kids do. It was never just a fling feeling, where I could move on. And he never liked anyone else so I hung in there, just to have my heart completely shattered tonight.” She looked down suddenly, as if Sirius’ eyes were too intense (he softened them in response, too late). “Basically, I never have liked anyone else other than him, never even considered someone else in that way.”

Sirius scoffed, shaking his head while hers rose. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No,” she said flatly. “But I’m not finished.”

//

Honesty wasn’t something foreign to you. Awareness and introspection. Speaking your mind and saying what hurt and where and why. But being truthful to the person who evoked those feelings was just nuanced enough for you to have never explored before: though you had liked Remus for six long and lonely and patient years, you had never acted upon it. You let it die in the same place it was born from.

So the tail-end of your sentence—regardless of how certain the delivery of the beginning was—vibrated, leaving your lip quivering. You were leaping into the unknown territory of being honest to the one person you suddenly wished to be most closed off too, though Sirius used to be the only person you could talk candidly to.

And that was one of the countless details that was floating in your mind, in a rather downwards fashion, finding its way into an empty groove which was a part of the visualization of your friendship with Sirius. Among total honesty, being able to always count on him to return regardless of what you said or who you were, there were the memories of childhood broom races, late night study sessions followed by even later talks, holiday gift exchanges, inside jokes, him always giving you a jacket after you showed the slightest sign of being cold. 

A wonderment struck your mind: how could you not have seen this sooner?

You cleared your throat before continuing speaking, the memories never quitting to remind you of their presence in your mind and heart. “Now that there’s no one to distract me from you, Sirius, I don’t know…”. You glanced up at his eyes, brown and bold and almost as breathtaking as his heart, and their hope consumed you in an achingly sweet manner. “I’ve always only seen you as a friend, my best friend, but now that I can see you differently,”—he bit his bottom lip anxiously, and a brand new sort of rush electrified your veins—“I think I’m starting to.”

And it terrified you, how that wasn’t a lie, how you had just told the unabridged truth to a man whose close proximity to your skin was beginning to make it buzz. If the fear wasn’t enough to make you know your words were honest, there was also the way your heart fluttered while watching Sirius Black blush, grinning boyishly at his double-knotted dress shoes, swaying in them as if too consumed by happiness to stand still. And there was the way you almost fell over when he finally flicked his eyes at you, so full to the brim with adoration the sweetness could have given you a stomachache. There was also the way you had to physically fight your neck from craning up, heels from lifting off the floor to press your lips to his, had to fist your fingers to stop them from pressing into his dress shirt and feeling up his torso in wavy lines.

Another wonderment struck your mind: how could you have not felt this sooner? 

You didn’t have much time to ponder the answer as Sirius leaned forwards, melting your mouths together with a soft fire that weakened your knees to the floor.

//

Sirius (the self-proclaimed pessimist he was) half-expected to be underwhelmed by the kiss. After so many years of dreaming, looking, longing, so many nights and days which he spent trialling this up, the parting of the lips and coaxing of the tongue, he thought leaning in this would be the understatement of the century. 

But it wasn’t.

There was a twinge of punch he tasted when flush against her lips, the salt of tears, too, but it faded quickly as he pushed his tongue in deeper, signing into her throat as if the oxygen in her mouth was the only good air left, as if his life depended on sucking it out of her. Lives should depend on kisses when the felt this heavenly, Sirius decided.

As if her mouth, hot and sweet against his, wasn't enough, she was clutching Sirius by his dress shirt right when he was adjusting to the feeling of fire which flooded his body, making him breathless once more. Besides himself, Sirius groaned her name down her throat, embarrassed by it only momentarily as he soon felt her fingertips pulse around his shirt, indicating something about his gravelly voice rough against her skin felt good. At the realization Sirius felt his head get dizzy.

Reluctant but completely out of breath, Sirius pulled back, panting, missing the firework sensation within milliseconds. He considered her and she him; both were wearing grins but hers was smaller and shier while Sirius could feel his was big and boyish, borderline goofy. After a deep breath he noticed Y/N’s hands hadn’t left his chest, but had flattened out against the fabric instead of squeezing him. She looked like she was steadying herself and, if he were to be completely honest, Sirius understood why.

A newfound uncertainty flooded Sirius’ voice when he broke the silence. “Uh, sorry,” he apologized sheepishly, forcing himself to look at Y/N as opposed to his dress shoes. “Was that okay? I didn’t really ask I just, ya know…” He gulped down a lump in his throat while resting his hand on its backside.

“Are you kidding?” she scoffed, letting her swollen lips hang open in disbelief, making Sirius want to press his against them once more (honestly, wanting to snog Y/N constantly was just a state of being for him by this point in time). “That was…” she searched for the words as though they were in Sirius’ shirt, watching her hands and fingers trail about the white material. Sirius spine almost arched. “That was indescribable, really, she finally finished. “In a good way, of course.”

“Cool,” Sirius responded, feeling his grin regrow and watching hers do the same but feeling terribly stupid. Because, thought kissing Y/N was not the understatement of the century, that reply certainly was. So he corrected himself: “I mean, that’s how I feel, too. Obviously, since I liked you first. But it was good. More than good. It was-”

He was cut off by her laughter, bright and relieving after seeing her teary-eyed for so much of the night. He didn’t even care it was directed at his eloquence; instead, a beat of pride coursed through Sirius at the knowledge it was him making Y/N feel this way. Not Remus. Never Remus.

“Are you always this nervous talking to birds?” she teased, pulling him out of his thoughts, making him huff in defensiveness.

“Um, no, you see. I really… usually I’m quite good. A smooth-talker, or whatever.” She was still laughing, and Sirius realized he was not helping himself with the barrage of lies, so let the truth fall out of his clenched throat. “It’s just you, really. You make me nervous.”

He said it with the softness only honesty contains, watching as it hushed down her laughter, painting her cheeks red and forcing her teeth to bite into her bottom lip. Now she was stuttering and Sirius loved it, knowing his words could make hers harder to find and put together.

“I, uh. Sirius I just don’t know what to say,” she began. “Because this is really fast, all of this. I mean, I just was crying over Remus, not that he even matters anymore, but I just learned how to look at you in this way, figured out I could like you if I wanted to and I’m a little overwhelmed by how much I do.” Sirius was smiling as if it was all he knew. Then, she bowed her head down, but Sirius could hear the grin she was hiding through her words. “Do you feel dizzy, Sirius?” 

He chucked. “I have felt dizzy for six years,” he responded, causing her to look up again, surprise in her eyes.

“You’ve liked me for as long as I’ve liked Remus? And you just, just listened to me? Just helped?”

“Yup,” Sirius nodded, deciding to not dive into the particularly gruesome details of pillowcase sobs and that one hole in his dormitory wall caused by his fist and his fist alone. 

But he didn’t have much time to articulate, anyways, as Y/N thrusted her mouth against Sirius’ once more, and every word was lost to him as tongues and lips and teeth coaxed and sucked and pressed, as Y/N wrapped her fingers back around his shirt as if that was where they were meant to be, as she sighed into the kiss a phrase that sounded like “it’s always been you,” and Sirius had never known a feeling just as unadulteratedly celestial as this.


End file.
